


elevated prosthetics

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, M/M, Zombiestuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-08 02:59:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You were sixteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ok so i wrote this in early 2013 and im back winter 2014 to edit this and write a little more bc im gay. this is literally just shitty angst im sorry
> 
> zombiestuck from @my-friend-the-frog if nobody knows that already

You don’t really remember it, if you’re honest.

A nasty part of yourself smarmily denies - remembers fingers and joints and sweat; skin in your peripheral instead of air and you shudder. It’s probably two am, you think – the clocks stopped a long time ago. Too early to be called late but too late to be called early, and you should be sleeping.

There’s a dim halflight flooding through the cracks in the darkwood door, and it’s wrong: it should be orange streetlights through venetians. Maybe. You’re not going to think about that, either.

(what’s he doing?)

You sit up and rub the sleep out of each eye in turn with the one arm, the one hand. Stretch a little, stand up. Stretch again. In the darkness you catch a vague glint in a cracked and yellowed mirror; a bruise down your side, a pickled scab - you turn, sickened. You feel the warm nightsweat on your lower back turn frigid. The house you share is always cold.

You run your tongue over rough top teeth, taste plaque and saliva – you reach for your tattered glasses. As you lean on the door out to the hall it sticks a little in the frame – it makes a thump as it slides out, which you always forget about every time you open it. You wince at the noise. 

Under your bare feet, the threadbare once-orange carpet guides you down the corridor. The pale light is coming from under the bathroom door, a beacon, a will o the wisp.

You hear the girls from their room whiffle on, asleep. You walk past the busted-up staircase to find your palm pressed flat against the bathroom door, which you prise open quietly, and slowly.

He’s sat on the floor, head tucked neatly under the sink, by the bathtub filled with all the water you have. There is a torch suspended neatly between two pipes, and a hunk of metal in the valley of his crossed legs. 

His dulled eyes refuse to acknowledge you. You watch his screwdriver turn slowly - twice, thrice, four, and it comes to a halt. A drip from the tap.

“Go to bed, Jake.” he whispers, not looking at you.

\--

You keep telling him it isn’t his fault, but it falls on deaf ears. He doesn’t want to know.

You want him to know. You want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and shake him and shake him and tell him it isn’t his fault, stop it stop it  _ stop it.  _ Stop blaming yourself, you selfish, selfish man. You  _ hate  _ it.

You know why he’s doing it, though, even if he doesn’t. Or, well, you can guess.

Roxy is chirpy; cheerful and bubbly, and you know why she’s doing that, too. You all do.

Jane is quiet. She doesn’t talk much at all, and she is the unreadable one. If her smiles are gunshots, the recoil burns.

You think maybe it’s funny - ironic, even - that it happened in a supermarket.

As indicated by a hanging blue sign you were in the cereal isle. You were cautious, careful, thumbing the safetys of your much beloved Berettas to a silence so thick it was suffocating. You were far too tense, far too alert to truly register anything. You were so busy looking behind you - check your back, check your back, they always come from behind, watch your six, and your hands (plural) were clammy, the sheen near luminous in the flashing bulbs above.

You screamed as if struck by lightning.

It had felt like there was an orchestra in your ears, an incoherent gong and a drum and a squeal and your body was moving unbidden, thrashing as if you were drowning – and its jaw unhinged from you at last and it fell to the floor. There was a disgusting snap and a squelch as Jane stamped on its skull and you dimly registered how her trainers were ruined.

You had warbled out an apology, if you remember right. Dirk had snatched your wrist steadily as if he were merely irritated, and picked molars out of the bite, your bite, the bite from the thing, like they were apples from trees.

The teeth fell to the linoleum alongside the still body, empty bullets in themselves, with a small  __ clink clink.  _ _ _ One after the other, softly, as if he didn't want to break you. _

Things went hazy. You dipped in and out of consciousness, a child at a pool tentatively placing a foot in, too cold; too hot. You could taste the chlorine they smeared into you.

You were back at your makeshift home with the purposely busted-in staircase, lying on the couch you'd all dragged upstairs weeks ago as Jane quietly bandaged you up. You had no idea how you got back there. Dirk and Roxy didn't watch Jane bandage you. They didn't watch.

You knew, you all knew. She knew, and said nothing. Roxy knew, and said nothing. Dirk knew, and said nothing.

And your memory completely failed, after that.

You woke up panting and yelling after a nightmare (exorcism, no chemicals, blood, the sound of flesh parting) - they hadn’t done  it , you hadn’t been bitten, everything was fine, if you repeated your mantras enough it would all disappear, Grandma would come and kiss you goodnight they were your  _ friends,  _ your  _ family _ , they  _ wouldn’t,  _ they were survivors  _ just like you  _ and everything was fine and they wouldn't have done what they did they -

Roxy had done it, Jane said shortly. Roxy did it. She was the only one who could’ve, only one with the nerve to dismember their best friends arm. Used Dirk’s sword, she said. 

They had had to. They had to, to save you. They couldn't have done anything else. 

(You don’t regret that your first thought was that they should have just killed you.)

Roxy herself had stroked your hair and hummed and rocked you as you had gulped, wracking with shock and revulsion and distrust. Whereas Jane was gentle yet removed, and looked at you with wet eyes and apologised and apologise and apologised, Rox would listen and hold you. At that moment, you weren't sure who you hated more.

\--

Jane found you a new book four days ago. You’ve read it six times since then.

It’s been maybe a month, another month - or two, since what you have named The Incident, because it makes it sound more like something out of a story than a real thing. The dust plays underneath your tongue a little. You use a brickish hunk of wood to balance the first page and your right hand, your only hand, to turn the rest. Turn, tuck.

He walks up to you quite suddenly, and pulls up a chair. You look up at him and flash him a smile, but he looks tired and doesn’t return it. You don't know why you expect he would. He doesn’t look at your face as he holds up a gnarled clump of metal and multicoloured wire.

It’s an arm. He’s made you an arm.

You didn’t get a choice, apparently. You blink a little, but he doesn’t say anything, and he pushes it against your shoulder silently. Measuring, calculating, and you can almost see his brain whirring.

You furrow your eyebrows and think he might have been measuring you while you slept, which is weird and also something you reckon he'd do. He's kind of a weird guy. (so are you.)

“Where did you get the parts?” you whisper. It's always whispers.

“Dishwasher,” and he puts the arm on the table and walks away. You watch him go, and he returns in a few minutes with a small makeshift toolbox – an old plastic bag. Sits down with a languid grace, starts working. You don’t know what he’s doing, really, but you watch him as he works. He only has eyes for the wires and, occasionally, your shoulder.

“We have a dishwasher?”

“Downstairs.”

You remember he’s done this before, with his old robots. Familiar roads.

He takes off his shades, grimy and stained; puts them down, and his blank, brown face looks paler and dirty in the dim, boarded up room. You are so tired. You keep smiling.

“When we attach this,” he says. “it might hurt.”

“Thank you,”

There is a pause.

“That won’t be today.”

“It isn’t your fault, you know.”

“I’ve just got to make sure it’s the right length, that’s all. When we do-”

Something clenches in your stomach. “-I really wish you’d stop blaming yourself, I don’t-“

“-though, you’ll have to be conscious. I need your-“

“-see why you’re doing this.”

“-imput.”

He looks at you then, the first time in a month.

You look away.

\--

He joins you the next day, and the next.

In the evenings you all play monopoly and scrabble and cluedo, and Roxy laughs extra hard despite having to be quiet, and Jane grins sometimes.

And in a mere two weeks it is ready, he says.

He kneels in front of you, passes you a relatively clean cloth, asks you to bite on it. You nod, and he really, really didn’t lie to you.

You feel every micrometer of the iron forcing itself into your muscle and your eyes clamp shut and your jaw locks and your fists - fist, fist, you keep on forgetting - clenches and  _ jesus cringlefucker christ your gulping and finding it difficult to breathe holy fuck alive oh god - _

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” and he sounds just as breathless, and you can feel warmth weeping down your left side and into the couch as the air takes on the stench of gore and you- “Shh, shh, you’re being so good Jake, shh,” you cant- you cant you’re going to make a noise fucking fuck fuck christ oh god- “It’s alright, I’m here, I’m here-“ and his hand is on your shoulder and pressing into your skin tightly and you try and concentrate on that, his nails printing crescents into your taut, taut ski- 

“Done,” and your chest is heaving as you spit out the balled cloth, slumping, head still pounding.

He whispers something, and his hand is still on your right shoulder. His fingers slide down a centimetre or so.

His other hand is on the metal, and you open your eyes to look at it; you can't feel through it but you can sense the pressure. His fingers and his wrist and his forearm are a shockingly bright red, as red and as dark as if it were all a cartoon, and you queasily realise that that’s because of you.

A gunshot.

Both of your panting stops instantly.

Dirk reaches for a few scuddy towels to the side and you take them and clamp them to the joint, writhing from the pain of contact. He walks out of the room quickly, and you can see the panic emanate off of his frame.

“ DIRK!” and it is Jane, it’s Jane’s voice, and she’s screaming _ ,  _ she’s screaming, why is she- your head feels like it's full of cotton wool, you hear someone else yell and you think that it might be Roxy, and your heart clenches and pain wracks through your torso.

You hear a thump, and another, and a hacking sound. More gunshots.  __ Your shoulder- _ _

“ JANE!” Dirk bellows, a million miles away, and you feel your chest seize again at the noise downstairs and you try and stand - fuck fuck fuck you __ NEED  _ _ to  __ HELP  _ _ \- your legs give out. You hear a scuffling and a thud, heavy breathing from the corridor, signifying Jane is up the rope ladder.

Roxy shouts something from the lower floor, and you hear Dirk hoist her up too, Jane calling for her and grabbing her hand, you think. There’s a crash from the opposite side of the house, and another thud; more moaning.

Dirk comes up. They tear into the room, slam the door so hard the frame quakes, eyes wide and breathing hard. You feel yourself swallow in relief.

Dirk is helping Roxy walk and he sits her next to you. She grimaces at the blood for a split second but this is replaced with a very, very fake smile.

“Anyone get...?” Dirk asks shakily.

Jane shakes her head, quivering. Roxy says: Nope.

There’s another noise downstairs, and another, and another.

“It’s okay,” you say, and your throat is dry. In contrast the cloth is really not dry at all, so you shift it a little. “We’re safe up here, we're safe.”

“Yeah,” Jane says, and looks at your arm.

“How much food do we have?” Roxy says, throat oscillating between tense and cheerful, and the tone causes you to all stare at her a little oddly.

“Enough.” Dirk says slowly.

\--

None of you sleep.

You all cuddle together, in the big double bed, and talk quietly, in hurried whispers. The zombies – because really what else would you call them - don’t share the same courtesy, and throughout the night they moan and groan and crash and snarl merely a few feet below you. You think of them as unruly burglars throwing a party below you. Truly a beast of a party. Shame you never cared much for alcohol really. 

Jane helped sling up your new arm earlier, and right now her head is resting on your stomach. You can feel the worry on her worn face, and how she flinches at every noise downstairs - you stroke her wiry hair halfheartedly, as Roxy practically spoons her, and Dirk curls a little closer to you.

“You alright?” you say, teasingly, trying to spur a laugh - you think of better times, when he would have said something funny and witty, but he just nods against you.

“This sucks major ass,” Roxy murmurs. “I wanted to play bollocks,”

\--

You’re reading again, as Dirk works on your arm.

He’s tinkering. Lit a clean fire in a bucket with some spare oil and some tinder - using it to solder some wiring with some paperclips, some pins, some nails. 

“I’ll admit I don’t know how you’re doing this.” you say, amused, eyes skating over the same words for the last five minutes. 

He replies after a few seconds. “What do you mean?”

“Well, how does it work?” you pause. “Like, you know, where’d you get all the tech from?”

He shrugs, mumbles something.

“Huh?”

“I need to work on your inner elbow,”

“Alright?”

He shifts around you, moving his stool to your opposite side. Leans across your legs to reach, and you move your right arm, your good arm, and stare at his ear in front of you.

You look away respectfully, and he breathes in.

After a few minutes, he leans back from your legs to stretch his back. It's obviously a really uncomfortable position.

“Would it be, er, easier for me to extend the thing ou-“

“You can’t move it yet.”

“Yes, but-“

“If I move it, it might dislodge from your arm. I’m fairly certain you don’t want to go through that again.”

You nod, smile nervously. “You're the man,”

He leans forward again and flickers his eyes at you quickly. Stills for a moment, leans back out.

“This isn’t going to work.”

“’thought not.”

He stands upright and behind you. Suddenly pulls you, chair and all, away from the table.

“Uh-“

He walks back around, puts a hand on your knee - you start. His nostrils flare as he pushes your leg out and your legs plural apart, and you swallow.

He puts the stool between your legs, until the wood of your chair is touching his chair. He sits on it sideways, both his tightly locked knees against your left thigh.

He lifts the arm up suddenly, and you hiss. “Bit of a warning,”

“Sorry, shit,” he says, but he lifts it up further - you feel your forehead connect with his shoulder as your face scrunches in pain.

He very slowly moves your arm up a tiny bit more and you make a very tiny noise.

“Do you want me to stop?”

You shake your head, but he ignores you and lowers the arm back down and works on it on his lap instead. You slide your forehead off of him, and the metal arm moves back a little with you. He clicks his tongue in annoyance.

“Don’t,” he mutters.

You shift forward a little. “Sorry.”

His gloved hands working are fascinating for a few minutes, but then you are looking up at his profile. He broke his nose last week, and it has a small crook in it that wasn’t there before.

After a few more minutes you see his eyes flicker at you again - his face is more coloured than a second ago.

“Can I ask you a question?” you prompt.

He stays silent, so you continue. “What are we gonna do?”

He knows what you’re talking about. It takes him a while to answer.

“I don’t know.” he says, and even though the conversation is as muted as always, his voice is barely audible. He stops working for a second, turns to you but doesn’t look, opens his mouth to say something else; scraps the idea and fixates back onto your arm.

“Dirk,”

“Mhmm.”

“Why do you-“

“That’s two questions. ''A' question' implies singular.”

“Ah.”

There’s a small silence as he drips metal onto the joints. He clicks his tongue again, blows on the liquid, an aid to cool it faster.

A small moan from downstairs.

“How long will it take for the buggers to go?”

“I know about as much as you do,” he snaps.

“Sorry.”

“No.” he pauses. “It’s been three days; shouldn’t be much longer, really.”

“I’ll tell you now,” you smile, “I’m getting sick of beans!”

He doesn't reply.

“Dirk?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. For um. For this.”

He goes silent and keeps working again. 

After a while he runs his tongue over his bottom lip. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” and you sound sulky, even to you.

“I need to lift up your arm.”

“Huh?”

“I need to lift up your arm,”

“Oh.”

\--

“Flex your fingers.”

You think about it. And think about it. And think about it. And push with your mind or something and-

-it doesn’t do it.

“I can’t.” you say.

“Yes you can. You’re thinking about it too hard.”

It takes another six tries, but when you try it after, your index finger moves. After a small amount of practice, you can move them all in turn, and you scoff in awe.

“ Strider this is bloody  _ fantastic _ ! Look- look- its...!” you trail off and look at him.

“It’s not done.” and he folds his arms.

–-

You were sixteen.

Sixteen when the news started to become clipped, sixteen when the neighbours started acting strange. You rounded everyone up around yours, because that seemed like the kind of thing to do.

You had lived in the country, a bungalow along a lane, with some fields and a dog and your grandmother. They had all lived in the city. They were the ones that spoke of the things that were happening, and Grandma said they could stay, and they did; made excuses about a sleepover.

Jane’s father had been worried - the news, the news - but he let her. Roxy’s mother had let her without a qualm. Dirk’s brother hadn’t picked up his phone. 

And the next morning, the television couldn’t pick up a signal. Radio didn’t work, phonelines were down. Your grandmother had made brownies and poured her first gin and tonic in twenty years.

You all watched Dawn of the Dead in silence, because maybe if you could do that it would be less what was happening outside the window, and chomped said brownies slowly. They were chocolate, and had small sugar-paper flowers on top. Grandma loved flowers. She also loved physics. There were little iced equations on them too. 

The next day, there was a visitor. Followed by a gunshot.

There was another the day after.

And the next.

And the next.

And the next.

And then the generator’s power went, and your grandmother grew serious - and she never really grew serious - and told you to leave.

Wasn’t safe, she was old. Take her gun. Take as many guns as she had that you could use. Take it all. I love you.

__ No, I’m not- _ _

\--

You are growing sick of this place.

The same three rooms and corridor have left you tired and stunted. You couldn’t go out at all; couldn’t climb down the rope ladder, couldn’t climb up - not until your arm worked right. You could move your fingers easily, and Dirk had braced the joint at your collarbone, so it wouldn’t slip out or cause as much pain, so it was getting places, at least. You shouldn't be impatient but at the same time.

It was usually Roxy and Jane that went out; a few days ago they found a warehouse that was mostly empty but had a locked cabinet in the staff room with some tea, sugar, stale biscuits, equally stale sandwiches you cut the mould off. Dirk stayed back with you, and worked on your arm.

Sometimes he went out with Rox, though, and you chatted and joked with Jane, which was fun. Sometimes he went out with Jane, so you played games and traded stories with Roxy, and that was equally great.

But at the end of the day? The girls grew to trust each other and work with each other - and you and Dirk were hardly speaking. Maybe it was the proximity of your living space, but that felt odd.

And the day came when he wired up the motion sensor for the “auxiliary motor functions”, or whichever probably nonsense descriptor for basic things he'd use.

Your arm moved. More than that, it could turn. It couldn’t flex, or do anything complex, but it worked.

You felt something catch in your throat; let out a choking noise: stood up and hugged him. He hadn’t hugged back.

\--

You walked down the road, driven into the city by the rumble in your bellies and the cars were quiet and as dead as the cows in the fields.  You zigzagged through them; a stealth unit. Dirty clothes, dirty faces, greyed in with the area. 

That was, until Jane had accidentally banged a car, thigh to wing mirror.

The alarm went off. All four of you traded the same look within three seconds. You, as one, panicked and ran into the nearest house.

Roxy was babbling something about Max Brooks’ Survival Guide and burning staircases and Dirk followed her blindly, wildly, fussing with matches and cooking oil as they swarmed and you shot them all down. Headshot at short range, shoulder shot,  _ bang bang bang _ , so _much_ noise, and Jane was at your side with an axe.

There was heat at your back and shoes, suddenly, and you turned to see a wall of dancing red and yellow belching thick smog, and Roxy and Dirk shouting. You had grabbed Jane and tossed her up, yelping from the heat. Dirk helped her as Roxy grabbed your wrist and shouted something and-

Something grabbed your jacket just as Dirk dived and grabbed your other wrist.

He screamed as they tore it off you, primal noises at both ends, fire burning your hair and eyebrows, hands scrabbling.

A bang, and you saw Roxy with the rifle, wreathed in flame and fire, God you're not religious but - felt the grip loosen at your tail. He hoisted you up.

Jane had found an extinguisher from somewhere, who fucking knows where, and beat the flames from getting any higher. Roxy grabbed the axe Jane had dropped and smashed in the top few steps, just enough so the fire could only burn downwards. It died shamefully quickly a good five steps up from the bottom, but they couldn’t reach you anymore.

You were all pretty unscathed besides claw marks and a lack of eyebrows. The car alarm echoed in the distance, and you all collapsed into the main bedroom, and made the bed covers filthy with ash.

\--

The rooms were divided for the sake of simplicity.

Yours and Dirk’s room was the storage room. Had a single bed and a bedroll, which you had originally squabbled over before he claimed the roll, and it kept the food and the weapons and anything else of importance anyone could find.

The girl’s room was the living room. It had the double bed and the couch and the table. It was crowded, usually, but nice.

The bathroom wasn’t used as a bathroom due to the plumbing no longer being functional. Rather, it was used as a secondary storage room. The first thing they did was to fill the bathtub and sink with water -  __ all mains water is drinking water, jakey, and that’s what were gonna run out of first, if it ain't run out already _ _ _ . Stored the medic supplies in there, too. _

_ They  _ used the floorboards and tiles and carpets from downstairs as covers for the windows in the other rooms upstairs.

For a first home, it wasn’t bad.

\--

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, oh Dirk, thank you, I-“

“Please don’t.”

“God I- thank you- you’re a fucking miracle worker-“

“Jake.”

You pause. “Yeah?”

“It’s not finished.”

“I know,” you say, “but it works,”

You lean back and break away from him, hands (plural!) locked on his shoulders.

You experimentally bring the metal hand up, grinning as it moves, and you put it on his head. You remember the times when his hair was carefully styled and trimmed, and you think that his hair as it is now doesn’t really suit him.

You ruffle it a bit, clunky and clumsy, and he is still, and you think that maybe he might be the one made of metal.

He brings a hand up to his head, on your hand - your hand! it’s  _ yours _ ! it may be metal but it’s  __ yours _ _ _ ! _ \- and he brings it down.

He holds onto the wrist of it awkwardly.

To spite him, you move your real hand, your other hand, onto his head instead, still smiling. Except when you ruffle his hair this time, you really feel it, and how greasy it is. You suppose your hair probably isn’t much different.

You run your fingers through it absentmindedly, and marvel in the novelty of his head shape underneath with your thumb. His fringe, his crown, down the back, and then the crook of the back of his neck and...

and you aren’t smiling anymore.

He’s gripping your metal hand so tightly his knuckles are white.

You remove your hand from his head, and he abruptly lets go of the metal one. You laugh again, but it’s forced. You both know it and know you know it and there’s a long moment where you just look at each other, and he’s probably thinking the same things as you.

Dirk spins on his heel, and you hear him walk into the corridor and shut himself in your shared room.

\--

You walked past the girl’s room once, and the door was shut.

You walked back into yours and Dirk’s room to find him awake, looking at the ceiling.

“ _I had to do it!!! I had to do it no-one else was doing ANYTHING!! Dirk wasn't doing anything! You weren't doing ANYTHING! Jake was off in cuckoo land fucking turning and you were doing NOTHING!”_ Roxy sobbed through the wall. She was screaming if it was possible to scream quietly. “ _Nothing!!!!”_

You crawled in with him, under his pathetically thin blanket, on his rollmat on the floor, and he didn't push you away. He didn't look at you. He didn't touch you. You curled your good arm around him and thought of nothing.

\--

You hadn’t been outside in a month.

When you asked for the next shower, they all agreed. Rox made a crack about your hygiene, and it wasn’t in very good taste considering, but you all laughed.

You stumbled out into the rigorously fenced and protected back garden, with the high thick walls, and the flimsy grass felt delicious on your hard feet. 

It was brutally cold. The rain slapped the ground weakly - but you relished it, stripping down and rubbing the ash and dust from yourself. Scraping red lines across dark skin with grubby nails. You scooped handfuls of water from the rain catcher and cheered.

Pulled on your wet clothes again, signalled inside that everything was cool, you were done, and everyone came outside to wash faces and clothes. 

\--

“I’m going to do some final checkups.”

“Sure!” and you position yourself on the sofa. He stands in front of you, and the girls have gone out again. This time in search of better hand weapons, you think, but in reality it’s probably food again. It's always food.

He sits down on your left, kneeling on the beaten and worn cushions. Faces your outstretched arm. The metal is dull already, coated with antirust that isn't really working, and resting atop the cushions on the back of the couch.

He drags his hands up the fingers, the palm, feeling out for bumps. Creator admiring his creation, maybe. His eyes don't have the critical hardness when he works, they're softer, like -

From wrist, he passes the elbow joint, up to your shoulder – and he moves his body with his hand movements, careful.

The leather of his palm reaches your collarbone so slowly, touches your skin, and he is kneeling over your lap. He's warm. You feel yourself tense, and he leans in a little closer, until he's straddling you. His eyes are locked where the metal meets your flesh.

He cups your face with his other hand and makes a distinctly odd half sighing, half not noise, and your mind is blank and 

he leans his forehead to yours.

“You - did a great job, Dirk,” you breathe, choke, eyes saucers if saucers were ever wide enough. It's more your mouth moving than actual sound, and he moves his hand from the joint to your chest. His head tucks under your chin to your neck, his hair tickles your cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he maybe says, and his breath is warm and something tingles in the small of your back, and then the pit of your lower stomach. 

He plants a long kiss into the well of your collar.

You freeze.

His mouth lets go. 

He accidentally breathes onto where he wet your skin and it comes up cold. You count his breaths without realising. His chest moves against yours and you have never thought about Dirk's lungs before but you picture them inflating, slowly, deflating, slowly, inflating, slowly, deflating, slowly, in

He sits back.

He looks at you for a long time, face unreadable.

He gets off you, and sits next to you on the sofa. From the corner of your eyes you see he is staring at the wall. There is another point where he is quiet, but this time, if it’s a second, or a minute, or an hour, or a year; you are unsure.

“Do you want to play Top Trumps?” you ask, when you can speak again.

\--

Maybe the worst thing was clearing out the rooms.

There was a sidedraw in the main bedroom, and it had a few very old photos of a party, dated ‘86. Fluffy toys and unicorn posters in the second bedroom, books about princesses and castles. The bathroom had three different types of conditioner, and fun soaps resembling animals.

The sitting room had dried coffee mugs and wrappers of chocolate bars and biscuit crumbs and magazines about home life and interior design. The kitchen had a rotting fridge with drawings by toddlers on the front of it, a sun on a blue sky with a red house, and dead plants on the windowsill. The garden had a trampoline.

When you realised you didn’t have enough blankets, you all silently put on the clothes of these strangers. Found the boiler and the airing cupboard, and used the towels, too. The only place you didn’t use was the loft, because the loft is the unwritten space of old boxes; where the schoolbooks and photos and christmas decorations live.

Before you lost and gained an arm, you remember tearing down curtains, shifting furniture; you were the strongest. Nails in your teeth as you hammered in boards, crowbar in hand as you planked up boards. Upstairs was the first priority; but after that came the bottom, and then the garden.

They would go out in pairs, always in pairs.

Except; it was lonely. It was quiet, and lonely, even when all four were in it, and the house was always dark and always cold. You don’t believe in ghosts, you aren’t superstitious, because you know they’re real.

You decided on a day trip, and it was successful, so it happened more frequently.

And of course - it was with the increase in comfort, in ease, in familiarity; with your friends, knowing they were with you - that it happened in a supermarket just down the fucking road.

In the Old World, they said you were more likely to be hit by a car right outside your house than if you were dancing across a motorway - and although it’s not true so much these days, you know the logic.

\--

You’re eating tinned peaches, because they are your favourite. The syrup is sticky, and you don’t like that much - and your other arm hates it - but it is delicious, so you don’t really mind. Jane likes them too, but she always gives you hers.

You think everyone is too nice to you, sometimes. You spoon some more into your mouth. Dirk hasn’t spoken to you in three days.

You went out with Roxy first, then Jane. Dirk is today, you think.

In ten minutes you finish, and follow him down the former staircase.

Dirk looks through the eyehole, unbolts and unboards. You both walk out, down the street - and if you had to be quiet before, it doesn’t compare to being outside.

You both walk a few blocks, wary of the sunshine and the sun levels. You tap your finger on your pistol, breathe in through your nose, and you are still incredibly glad you have your good shooting arm intact.

Dirk has a rough, heavy sword in his hands. His katana broke last month, the result of an accidental whack from Jane’s axe, and you think it affected him more than he lets on. His hands are tight around the wound brass handle, and you think about the wrongness; the tautness in his form, and his neck.

He notices you looking, and shoots you both a questioning and a territorial look in return.

You find a convenience store you’ve been to before, and it’s your idea to double check.

You are reserved as you both enter, and you think of the last time you were in this supermarket; feel a ghost knead your non-existent arm.

A snarl and a slash and a thud and you spin to see Dirk kill one of them. You turn to check for others, and you cannot find any.

You find the old corpse with the smashed in skull, dried blood in dribbled maps, stinking.

A fly.

Your old handgun, under an empty box of cornflakes. You look at it for a while. Roxy and Jane never came back here on their weapon searches. None of them had come back here for it.

You pick it up and stick it in your back pocket.

\--

“We found someone.”

“What!?” you stand up as the girls walk in.

“Out there, there’s a group of them!” Jane says, grinning. “Just like us!”

“You’re serious?” Dirk lifts his head up from the sofa for the first time in the afternoon.

“Yeah!!” Roxy says. “They’re our age, I think, and it was only the one - but he said there were four of them, too!”

“Can we trust him?” he says.

“Ofc,” - and she pronounces it ‘oh eff see’ - “he was a hottie,”

“No, I, I think so.” Jane adds excitedly. “He put down his weapon for us. He was looking for food, too!”

“We passed on a couple of cans and told him to meet us there tomorrow!”

Dirk’s face goes from blank as always, to horrified. “You  _ what _ ?”

The room goes quiet.

“Was that not a good idea?” Jane says.

“No! That was a terrible idea!” he exclaims.

“Phhst,” Roxy says, waving a hand dismissively.

“ You gave this jackass  _ food?  _ You told him where we’d  _ be!?” _

“He was starving,” Jane snaps.

“WE’RE starving!” he shouts, and it is an earthquake in comparisons to the whispers.

“No thanks to you!” she cries back.

_ “ _ _ Excuse me?!” _

“ You’ve sat up here for  _ months  _ and done what? “Worked on Jake’s arm”?! We need your help!”

He is gobsmacked. He starts shaking his head and his lip is curling and-

“If there’s not enough food, we can do porridge for dinner I'm sure we have some oats left in the storeroom,” and it takes you a moment to realise that it was you who spoke.

The room is heavy again with another thick, tense silence; a smouldering treacle. Roxy is looking at the floor. Dirk and Jane have not broken eye contact.

The still, like someone just paused a film, continues for a long time.

“Sounds good,” says Jane, finally, and she smiles.

\--

You’re playing chess with her at the table, using spare clothing pegs and stones as pieces. The board are some markings on the table, because you had to use the board as firewood. Roxy and Dirk are on the bed, and Dirk is making something again.

Roxy is asking what it is, as you move your black-squared bishop, which is denoted by a small inscribing on the peg.

“A water filter.” Jane takes the bishop with a rook.

“Oh good,” Pawn takes pawn.

He smiles.

Jane’s rook goes on to take your queen. “Check.” she says neatly.

“What the fuck.” you grumble, and move your king up a square.

She smirks, and moves it along with it. “Check, again.”

You move it up another square. “No, that’s still in check.” she says.

To the side? “Nope, that’ll be in check too.”

“Chess is stupid.” you say.

“No, you’re just,” Roxy says from the bed, and blows a raspberry, “at it.” Jane laughs.

She wriggles upright and walks over to you. Takes the rook with your king.

“What the hell? I didn’t know you could do that!” you furrow your eyebrows. She laughs, and shifts you up, taking your place at the chessboard.

“It’s on, Janey!” and Jane chuckles her owlish chuckle.

You go and sit next to Dirk. “Girls are bad,” you say in a particularly loud whisper, even though you are all in the same room.

They laugh, and Dirk shakes his head, amused.

\--

The sky is white and it’s drizzling, a little.

All four of you stand by a hedge row in the suburbia, tense in the open. You figured you'd show numbers and weapons in case they “tried anything funny”, to quote Dirk. It is the first time you've all been out since The Incident (you giggle to yourself).

“Sure this is the right place?” Dirk mutters. Jane nods.

There’s a figure moving down the middle of the road. You point at it, and they all notice. The figure is joined by three others, and they walk your way.

Roxy cocks her rifle, your Grandma’s rifle, and walks forward a bit.

One of the people wave to her, and she doesn’t wave back. They walk towards you, and you walk towards them, and you meet halfway.

Two girls, two boys, around your age. Sledgehammer, sword, a rifle, knives.

“Hi!” the sledgehammer boy says.

“Hey again,” Jane replies. Roxy has the rifle pointed at the other girl with a rifle, but she lowers it a little, and looks around. They were still in the open.

“So, uh,” the boy continues. “Thanks for the food, yesterday. That was cool.”

“That’s quite alright!” Jane says cheerily, and you see Dirk’s jaw set.

“Uh,” he says, and the knife girl cuts in.

“I’m sorry if this is rude, but we were wondering about your stock levels.”

“Nada,” Roxy says.

“Huh?” the other rifle girl says.

“Nothing. We don’t got shit. Maybe enough food for a week, pushing it.” Dirk says, and wow, you didn’t know you were that low.

“Haha, wow. We’ve like, got even less.” the hammer boy says.

“Maybe we should pool resources?” the knife girl suggests, rather forwardly. Dirk narrows his eyes.

“What’s in it for us? You have less.”

“We have a police station.” the boy with the sword says. The girl glares at him.

“How the fuck is that a positive?” Roxy says.

“Water, ammo. Washing machines, showers. Electricity, beds, heating.”

“No,” Jane breathes unbidden.

The dark haired boy nods vigorously. “It’s super great!”

“Bullshit,” Dirk says, and you see him grip his sword a little tighter.

“No, we’re serious.” the girl with the gun says. She has an ammo clip around her shoulder. “The boiler is still going cause it's on a pilot. I rerigged it so it uses less fuel. It's a bit sucky keeping on top of it but it's better than nothing.”

“I doubt that you’d offer us all of that just for food.” Roxy says.

Sword boy looks at the knife girl again. “We know you’re good with that kinda shit,” and he gestures to your arm.

Knives continues. “There’s a store room that we’re pretty sure is full of emergency rations, but we’re unable to access it.”

“I’m a mechanic, not a locksmith.” Dirk says.

\--

They had been watching you for a while.

Nothing huge, and mainly accidental. But they followed you and took what you left behind; took notes on where you lived - when you left and when you returned. Killed things behind you as some small thanks.

Part of you thinks maybe it was a bit creepy, how they looked after you without your knowledge. But they needed you.

After a quick discussion aside, you had gone with Roxy’s plan.

So you followed them, a group of eight, until you reached a brick building. Glass smashed, metal fences and barbed wire and boarded windows. Hammer opened the heavy tall gate, ushered you all in, closed it securely. Did the same with the front door, and another door, and then they descended into a basement hatch.

“You can put your things down, if you like.”

“I’m alright, thanks.” Jane whispers, and you have to remember it as a whisper. It’s strange how loud they are in comparison to you four, even though they are just talking.

“I know you don’t trust us, and that would be sensible and wise and like, the best thing, but seriously? We’re all in the same boat here.” Hammer says, and he sounds irritated and also sad, and you think that’s maybe quite an impressive feat.

“We don’t have a reason to kill you. If I’m honest, we could have done it numerous times if we wanted.” Knives deadpans. Rifle pouts a little and scowls at her, and Dirk and Jane bristle.

You sling your bag down onto the floor, along with your gun.

“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you said you had a shower?” you ask.

\--

“God, don’t you think this is similar to that scene from the Walking Dead?” you practically shout over the roar of the running water, throat already hoarse, feeling liberated.

In the cubicle to your right you hear a splash, and Roxy laughs. “What, you mean when they’re all-“ and she pauses. “They were showering in a police station!”

“Yeah!” you yell, rubbing the dirt out of the lines in your metal arm.

“God wasn’t that like the first episode?!” Jane calls from the other side of Roxy.

You hear Dirk laugh.

“Oh my god, Dirk! You must be having an aneurysm or something!” Roxy realises.

“You don’t even know, kiddo,” he bellows, and you all laugh.

You turn off your faucet and get out, grinning. You dry your hair off with a ridiculously clean towel.

“Wow English, you never told me you had such a nice ass,” Roxy says from behind you, and you hear Jane and Dirk, who are still showering, break into hysterics.

You scoff. “I’m fairly certain yours is nicer, Rox,”

“Maybe we should hold a competition!” she grins, and you wrap a towel around yourself, maybe embarrassed but not really caring. She’s drying her hair - which seems to have gotten about six shades lighter - with another towel, and throws you one.

You note her thinness, the scars lining her body. “Yeah, and Jane and Dirk would be the judges.”

“Aw, that’s as biased as hell,” and she snickers, but she’s looking at your arm with the same sadness.

\--

You stay up and play go fish.

All they have are a set of cards, in comparison to your many board games, and you guess there were perks to living where you did. They bring all out the food they have to show you, and you all ration a bit and joke and laugh.

You are aware of the trust they are placing on you, and they are aware of the trust you are placing on them. They seem like good people, you think. They’re just scared teens, too.

It’s much warmer down here, and you are sat in nothing but a pair of shorts. Your shirt is in their washing machine, along with Dirk’s, and Jane’s and Roxy’s, as well as theirs. It almost seems novel, like you’re playing strip poker. You’re all scarred and battered, bruised and grossly thin and still dirty, despite the showers.

You all laugh a bit too loud.

Hammer, you find out, is named John. Knives is Rose, but you think Knives suits her better. The broken sword guy is Dan- Dane- Dave, you think, and Rifle is Jade.

You soon discovered they hardly ever use the house and offices on top, in favour of the bunks, dorms and supply rooms below.

You asked a few questions about the security of the basement, and Da- De- damn it, you can’t remember, started calling you Marvin. Told him your name was Jake, actually, and he said it was a reference, and he didn’t expect “grandpa to get it,”. You flared up a little, explaining you weren’t paranoid, or an android, or a  _ grandpa _ , and he had laughed.

The girls go off together to the girl’s side, and you and the other boys on the boy’s. John moves his things over from one bunk, so you could use it.

Dirk tries to claim the bottom bed and you angrily shove him aside. You think he grins as he clambers up the metal ladder.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Right at the start, Jane proposed the idea of looking for family. The bedroom-come-sitting room in the house you had taken at a whim was muggy and stuffy, and you were all sharing two tins of kidney beans.

Roxy had shot you a glance, a full scale medical examination in a brush of irises, and asked you if you wanted to go back. Maybe she was still there, we hadn’t gone far.

No.

Jane asked Roxy the same question, and the corner of Roxy's mouth twitched slightly as she had smiled and said there probably wasn’t much point, really, as they’d die before they got there. She had lived on the other side of the city.

Jane nodded back at her, looked at Dirk.

Not much point in asking me if Rox can’t, and he scraped the juice from the tin with a dulled spoon. There’s no way we’re going that far - he belonged to a downtown skyscraper.

There was a pause as everyone passed go, took the queen with the pawn - added two and two and got the amount of turns to a rubik’s cube.

“ Your daddy o’s fine, thou, Janey,” Roxy said –  __ lied  _ _ \- and you felt bile in your throat.

\--

You four go back a few days later.

There is an unwritten and undiscussed attitude of yes. Yes, we are moving. Yes, we are staying with them.

Part of you thinks it is too fast. Maybe it was instilled by the need for a change of environment, maybe it was just the new people and the new and short-lived interactions.

No-one says anything as you all start grabbing cans and blankets and clothes, stuffing them into beaten military rucksacks lent from the other group.

You look at the couch, and there is a familiar bloodstain on the centre cushion. Jane threads into your good hand and gives it a quick squeeze, and you turn to her, a little surprised.

“It’ll be good to be outta here,” she says.

You nod, and let go of her. Your hand hits your thigh with a small thump.

After a short amount of time, you all walk out. Dirk remembers the way to the police station remarkably well, you think.

You leave the book Jane gave you on the table.

\--

Dirk worked on the supplies door for a whole five minutes before he started kicking it.

You watch him from down the corridor, leaning on the wall as he now leans on the door in turn, now forcing his weight onto it in frustration.

Your arms are folded, and the metal digs into the skin of your other arm tightly, pinching - you think that watching Dirk do this is funny, because he is the most patient person you know.

Last night he had a dream.

It is pitch black underground, but the safety light floods everything orange when the main lights are off.

You had looked up to see ankles suspended over the side of the bed. They shifted a little; small hairs bathed in amber, toes curled in sienna.

You heard him make a small choking noise, run his fingers through his hair.

Dirk reaches back and slams his fist onto the patch above the doorknob. He pulls away after a loud clang, shaking his gloved fingers furiously and whistling like a kettle.

“What on earth are you doing?” you say, pretty incredulously.

He turns so fast he twists the muscles in his neck - he massages it; makes an exasperated noise from his nose.

Hang on just a tic. “Wasn’t there a crowbar in the garage?”

He ignores you, and punches the door again. He shakes his hand with an even greater intensity, and you bite back the urge to laugh.

“No?” he says through gritted teeth.

“Back at the old place. There was a crowbar?”

He looks at you and his expression almost peels away; he blinks - looks back at the door, and the joint to the wall; breathes out heavily. “You sure?”

“Yeah! I planked up the back door wrong the first time, remember?”

He looks at you again.

\--

In the communal room, which is large - cubby holes in the walls and two sofas and a kitchen and a big table - there is a ladder. And by the ladder, there is a shoe rack.

Shoes wear down fast, and you are saving the spare police equipment for a later date. As such, they are all almost identical mountain gear, besides Dave’s battered converse; Rose’s bruised boots.

Roxy’s have grey soles - Jane’s have an eyelet missing. John’s laces don’t have aglets; Jade’s shoes are khaki. Dirk’s are scuffed, overtly so.

You grab yours - with the leather tongues - and start lacing up.

Dirk returns from the storage room with his sword and your pistol, which he passes to you gently.

You pull the hatch down equally gently.

There are scattered papers and pens, and the daylight tastes strange. You are lucky they have two or three clocks down there.

You both exit the building swiftly. It is very sunny, and you feel a little hot under your bomber jacket.

The walk is long and in silence; quiet in more than just sound. You find yourself distracted by his gait, and you solve the mystery of his scuffed shoes.

The sun is bright, and there are horsetails in the sky, and they remind you of aeroplanes. You spend an hour or so thinking about if you might be the only humans in the whole world.

You’re here.

You walk up the familiar drive, Dirk behind you, and quietly enter the building.

Instead of climbing up, you both walk into the sitting room, and then through the kitchen, to the garage door.

You look around you before opening it. The crowbar is in the corner of the room, balanced upright in an umbrella stand - brother to a firepoker and a broom.

Dirk scoffs at the mismatched family and picks the crowbar up.

Unsheathes it a little too dramatically, swishes it around. He bounces it on his hands, once, twic-

You yelp.

A sharp tug on your old wound, the sound of metal splintering - a swing of your other wrist - you shoot it straight in the head on instinct, panicking.

The gunshot is deafening in the concrete walled garage, and it rings loudly.

Dirk is looking at the corpse on the floor in horror.

A groan from the sitting room.

He dashes out of the room and you follow him quickly, to see him slash it to the ground.

The front door is open.  _ Why is the doo- _

There are at least fifteen in the front garden and they are moving very quickly.

He dances on his feet, a little jig, mind racing and body not keeping up, and shuts the front door with a slam.

You turn to see the one he took down mouthing your foot like a teething baby would a toy, and you recoil and stamp on its head. Blood pools into the carpet.

Dirk points to upstairs, and you look at your mangled robot arm in reply.

“Fuck.” he says resolutely.

A knock at the door. It’s almost comical.

He flicks the bolt and secures the latch, swings the eyehole cover closed, which is equally comical.

You let out a nervous snort. Your left shoe is very damp.

He scrambles up the stairs and the rope ladder with ease, and swings his arms down for you. You reach with the one arm, your metal arm dead weight, wincing as he pulls you up.

\--

You met him when you were thirteen.

You moved to a new school, and a girl called Roxy latched onto you. Thought you were cute; British boys were cute. You explained you weren’t British, like,  _ not at all _ , and she had hushed you and told you to let her dream. You did.

She introduced you to Jane, who was short and bit her lip and wouldn’t stop talking about Agatha Christie. She had a Scooby-doo lunchbox and jam sandwiches with no crusts. Maybe it was a little weird, to have two girls as your best friends, but you didn’t care. Sure, you played sports with the lads sometimes, but it was nice to spend lunch time copying your math homework from Roxy and sharing film knowledge with Jane.

It was good.

And when Roxy pulled Dirk into the equation, it was even better.

Swapped snide remarks and jokes; he would grate on you and you on him. It was funny, and you thought he was funny. His badly dyed hair and orange braces and triangular glasses were funny. Not to mention his obsession with downright  _ weird  _ puppets.

You all ate pumpkin pie and watched bad films and copied each others homework. Got smashed and played bad videogames, walked around the block belting out internet humour and bad raps. Snuck into Ikea and Lidl and Walmart to ride in supermarket trolleys and bounce on Swedish furniture. Lived in each others houses, never stopped texting and iming and skyping.

You're really not one for nostalgia. 

\--

You are both lying on the hallway floor after he dragged you up. There’s a scratching at the door below.

“Get off me,” Dirk says wearily.

You do.

You both lie there for a few minutes, and maybe for the second time, you can see him going over the same things as you in his head.

“I shouldn’t have fired the gun,” you reason.

“You wouldn’t have had to if I just shut the fucking door,” he says, tired and quiet, throat contracting. He shakes his head a little in disbelief.

“It’s not a big deal,” you lie.

He doesn’t reply.

You sigh, sit up; tear off your shoes. You get up and walk into the familiar main room, flop down on the sofa.

From what little you know of robotics and mechanics, you are able to determine that your arm isn’t too broken. No huge damage, you think. (you hope.) Stand up again; take off your jacket - try and support it in the position Jane put it in from what seems like eons ago.

Dirk bats your hands aside. You didn’t even hear him come in.

He throws your jacket down onto the sofa and shucks off his lightweight hoodie. Lifts it up, zips it up, and stretches the sleeves out. Winds it round your arm carefully.

Moves around you and secures it at your opposite shoulder, a reef knot. Fingers skittery and palms flat on your back.

“We took all the materials for my arm over, didn’t we?” you ask, but you know the answer.

“Yeah,” and his fingers linger a little; reluctant.

You cough and turn around, smiling.

“Wow, I forgot how dark it was in here!” your face falls. “We took the candles too, didn’t we?”

He nods once.

“Fuck,”

“Fuck.” he agrees.

\--

When you were eleven, your grandma taught you how to shoot.

Her arms around you, hands firm on your small ones, skin wrapped around bone wrapped around  _ your  _ skin and bone, wrapped around wood wrapped around metal in turn. She smelt of plant mulch, shampoo, and something you would later recognise as gin.

Shot cans off a fence.

When you could do that easily, it became targets on a tree, which she didn’t like that much. Then it was birds and rabbits and squirrels, which your grandma  _ really  _ didn’t like that much, so you stopped. She didn't push.

You instigated the whole thing, anyway. You wanted to be Indiana.

One time, you turned your iPod onto the James Bond soundtrack and ran through the forests, and chased after the guy with the pickup a few fields down - real pistols cocked and loaded, grandma’s dog on your heel. Safety off.

You remember how religiously you catered for them. Cleaned them and disassembled them and cleaned them again, almost every night. Therapeutic, almost.

They say many things. That places shape people, and people, places. The weird pink frothy blood - sputum, you think - is oxygenated, and if you start retching it you’re probably going to die soon. Water is, yes, actually blue, something to do with the light. Lara Croft is the hottest female in gaming history; you shouldn’t put tinfoil in a microwave.

But they also say that a sword is only a sword when it kills. You don’t like to look at your guns anymore.

\--

It’s warm.

But it’s also cold, and you shiver.

Your forehead and nose is squished against something smooth that you quickly identify to be the small of Dirk’s back.

You lean your head away. He grumbles a little in his sleep, but is otherwise unphased as you pull your arm out from under him.

Jiminy  _ christmas  _ it is cold.

You roll over onto your back, mindful of your slung arm.

You wet your lips, taste dried spittle, and think about how the girls lay in this bed for however many goddamn months and must have … um... looked up at the same ceiling.

You shuffle a little, and reach for your glasses. Throw them on and stab your eye in the process, regular procedure. 

Stomach is currently threatening to implode. You grit your teeth and ignore it, shiver again. You are not sleeping without a blanket again as long as you may live, you decide.

Dirk rolls over - you sit up. Away.

It’s quiet.

His hair looks soft.

He blinks a few times, eyelashes crackling with sleep. His lips twitch. He's waking up.

Now would be a very good time to look away, you decide.

You don’t.

He looks back.

Yes, you do, and you forcibly snap your head to the side.

“Have you checked outside?” he asks you after a while, voice raw.

“No, not yet,” and you scoot over and get off the bed, not looking at him as you exit the room.

You walk quickly into the old storage room, now almost empty, and lean up to the peephole in one of the boards.

Corner of the road to the left, all clear. Sweep gaze right slowly, no movement, no movement - his hair looked so goddamn soft, you wonder what it would - look again, no movement, house on the right is looking darker than usual today, you wonder why that is.

You swallow.

There’s a black car in front of the house opposite you. You have memorized the license plate, and you recite it under your breath.

You walk back into the room, and he is sat on the bed crosslegged. He looks at you expectantly.

“It seems alright,” you say. He shivers, skin prickling, and you’re aware you’re using his jumper for your sling. “Do you want-”

“Nah,” he says, and looks at the wall.

You hover in the doorway. “Do you...?”

He knots his hands.

“Do you think that they think we’re dead?”

He shrugs a jarred shrug.

\--

“Hey, uh, I don’t want to be rude, but like-” John is peering at you from over your book. “Why do you have a weird robot cyborg arm?”

The fluorescent light flickers a little, and hums.

“Well, uh,” You cough, and the air con is whirring, but the washing machine isn’t. “Dirk- Dirk made it for me.”

John nods at you to continue.

“It was in a supermarket, um,” speaking as if walking on ice. “I was concentrating too hard on the-”

“Did you get bit?” he asks cheerily.

The air con cuts out for a second. You hear an intake of breath from across the room.

“Yeah,”

“But you didn’t- what?” he tilts his head like a puppy. “Like, Rose said it was transmitted through the blood, but if it bit you, like - what, did it tear off your arm?”

“No,”

“Woah, so like, you got bit, and your whole arm just fell off?”

“No,” you reply, and you are wearing thick, grey socks today.

“I don’t get it?” he says.

“John,” Jane says quietly.

His hands go skyward. “I was just asking,”

She goes back to her game of chess with Dave, but shoots him a dark look.

There’s a silence for a few minutes.

“ But what happens if he’s got the disease like, in his blood or something, and he could turn into a zombie at  _ any moment?”  _ and he paces around to address the room. “Like, has seriously  _ no one t _ hought about this? I mean, holy shit, I didn’t know he’d been bit, like, that’s kinda  _ a big deal, dude,  _ we should all kinda know about something like-”

Roxy smacks him round the head.

\--

“Holy shit, holy shit - you two scared the bejeebers out of me!” and Roxy gets up on tiptoes to plant a kiss to your forehead, curly hair bouncing, before prodding your sling a little half-heartedly.

You walked down the ladder maybe three seconds ago. Dirk is still climbing down said ladder.

“What on earth were you two doing?!” Rose exclaims, giving you a brief hug.

“Boning,” Dirk says casually, and you inhale the spit in your mouth and start coughing.

Dave laughs and Rose chuckles and Roxy punches him on the shoulder.

At least his humour is back, you think wryly. Jane wraps her arms around your neck tightly and quickly. You’re still coughing, and you think maybe that wrecks whatever she was going for, despite wrapping your arm around her in turn. You clear your throat, eyes smarting, and she lets go.

You both explain why you were away for 15 hours rather than 3, to which they send sympathetic looks, especially to you and your arm. They start rummaging for food.

Dirk refuses, gestures to the crowbar - asks you all to wait a sec.

You follow him down to the bolted storage room door. He has it open in under five minutes.

\--

“Back to square one, huh?” you say.

He sniffs, tightens a screw in your elbow. “Nah, s’more like Bond Street,”

You think a moment.

And another.

“I don’t think I know enough about monopoly or biomechanics to extend that metaphor,”

He chuckles, you grin.

Despite the fact that you were now all rolling in food, the group felt the need to keep searching. Roxy and Jane went out with Jade and John. Rose is asleep, and Dave is hanging the laundry on the clothes horse in the next room.

And Dirk is fixing your arm, again.

“Lift it up?”

You do.

“Higher.”

You do.

“No, all the way.”

You do.

He starts fiddling with the ball socket above your armpit. Every now and then his knuckles brush - oh. “No gloves today?”

“Nah,” he says, and you hear a small ting cling clack, and he breathes a profanity. A movement of his wrist, a squeak, and it’s alright again, you think.

“In the wash?” you muse.

“Nah,” he repeats.

You pause. “What’s the infamous Dirk Strider without his fingerless gloves?” and you chuckle.

He says nothing.

He shifts a little, and his oddly bare hand brushes against your leg lightly and a little too conveniently, considering - you look at him in the corner of your eye.

You really aren’t sure if you imagined it or not.

\--

He’s kissing you.

You push him against a wall and you touch him and touch him and touch him - rough and soft, soft and rough. He pushes back onto you and you push him harder.

He sings you a symphony with only his hands in your hair - and you conduct him, or something, play him like a bass, or a tambourine, or a piano, or a tuba or a didgeridoo or maybe a fucking electric triangle  _ who the fuck cares  _ you don’t do music.

His tongue is very wet, and yields, and he's making noises and and his arms are moving to your hips, to under your shirt, and he is panting hard when he breaks away, and looks beautiful - wide amber eyes and dark skin darker, blown lips and cheeks so dark and his bright hair is very, very soft.

He moves his hands down further, his eyes shining in challenge just the way they did when you used to wrestle, his lips doing that quirk of his, his hands going under your -

You blink

\- a million times, retinas scorched from the light, before a blurry Jade is looking down at you. She laughs as you struggle to sit up, passes your glasses over.

“C’mon, sleepyhead!” she says, significantly sharper than before.

You nod, dazed. She tells you Jane made “actual breakfast! cooked stuff!” and she asked her to wake you up, to which you nod again. She says she’s sorry about that. She then leaves you to get changed.

You sit on your bottom bunk for a moment and consider what the hell your subconscious wants with you exactly.

You get changed.

You walk down the hall, and into the main room. True to Jade’s word, Jane is frying something, and it smells ridiculously good. Jade herself is reading an old newspaper.

You feel your face stretch, and then fall, because Dirk is handing Jane some rashers.

He meets your fallen gaze with an arched eyebrow.

You feel heat pool to your face, and you look awa- no, no. You are  _ not  _ doing the blushing Japanese cartoon majiggy thingy, you  _ will  _ look at him, r _ ight  _ in the eye, so what if you just dreamt about -

“Jane, that smells frigging amazing!” you cut your thoughts off.

She turns, fishslice in hand - beams at you. “I still can’t believe the storeroom’s actually a fridge!”

Anime, it’s called anime. How the  __ frig _ _ did you forget tha-

“God, I love bacon.” Jade says, from the sitting room. “You know we have mince and stuff too? And sausages?! Proper fucking meat!”

“Uh,” you think. “what about the others?”

“They’ve already had some, and we were waiting for you!” she says, and grins. You feel a bit bad.

“They went out a little earlier,” Dirk says. “After some new clothes.” and then he licks his finger. Slowly. And watches you, like he's doing it on purpose, like he knows, like -

Jane slaps his wrist with her other hand. “Don’t do that, you silly goose! It’s raw meat!”

He laughs. Dirk's laughing. You do too, half a second too late.

“Are you alright?” Jane asks quizzically, smiling. Dirk passes her another rasher and the pan sizzles and spits. He leans on the counter. He's had another shower this morning and he's styled his hair somewhat. 

“Oh, yeah! Grand!” you fold your hands into your pockets. You remove them right after.

She nods sympathetically. “Get Dirk to make you a coffee, you’ll feel better.”

“I’m right here, Jane,” he scoffs.

“Make Jake a coffee, will you?” she teases, and sticks her tongue out at him.

It’s weird how …  _ normal  _ everyone’s acting, you think. How normal this whole thing is. Dirk fills up a blackened kettle and puts it on one of the hob rings.

This is  _ surreal _ .

“We have enough water for that?” you ask.

“Well, there’s the tank, remember?” Jane hums. “It's hooked up to the rainwater piping and has filters and stuff, John said.”

“Enough power?”

“This is on a pilot flame,” she says gently.

You feel like you’ve missed something.

“...we have coffee?”

“It sounds like you’re having a crisis over the bacon,” Jade calls. You forgot she was listening in. “It’s okay, I did too!”

You do actually really wish it was the bacon.

\--

You kick a pebble, and it skitters off to the side of the road. Roxy rests a hand on her gun, strokes it idly.

The summer has left.

You’re glad, really. It always seemed weird to have the trees so vivid. Ochre is nice with the green, nowadays.

It might be October, but you’re not sure. You think of school. You still don’t know what you want to be - Roxy wants to work with computers, you think, and Jane with languages. Dirk is math. Was.

Roxy’s mom’s fourth book was supposed to come out in October.

You kick another pebble, and Roxy ‘tsks’ at you.

Jade and Dirk are by a car. They are peering under the bonnet, fishing out oils. You are stocking up on petroleum for the later months, having discovered some vacuum containers. When you asked why, you got a load of meaningless technobabble about the boiler and the piping from Jade.

Dirk attaches some blue tubing somehow, and sucks it a little. Sniffs it and grimaces.

“It’s gone,” he says, and Jade sighs.

“That’s the sixth, now.” she says, a little tired and a little angry.

You and Roxy are keeping guard, and it’s been quite a few hours, going by the sun.

“How can you even tell it’s gone off?” Roxy wonders out loud.

“Smells like burning,” Jade says informatively. “come here.”

She walks over and takes a sniff. Makes an exaggerated “bluh!” expression, sound effect included. Dirk chuckles, and wipes his greasy hands on his thighs, black stripes on denim.

 

 


End file.
